Malteser squares for tea time ...

Emi has just had one of his school friends down to stay with us in Devon for a few days. They bonded originally over a shared fossil fascination, so much of our time has been  dinosaur-themed. We haven't done anything extravagant, but we've enjoyed long country walks with the Wonder Dog, feeding the chooks and making friends with our bovine neighbours who've moved into the cow paddock down the lane.

One of the country rituals that our little visitor from London approved of whole-heartedly was afternoon tea. In my world everything stops for tea, and my world always looks just a little bit better after a nice cup of Rosy Lee.

Now as everyone knows a cup of tea on its own is just too ... wet. It's calling out for a nice biscuit or a bit of cake. These Malteser Squares fit the bill perfectly. They're from an old recipe from my own childhood that my mum used to make for me when I had friends home for tea after school. And you know in all my years I've yet to meet a person who doesn't like Maltesers. Sure there are lots of chocolate snobs out there who'll sneer at the humble honey-combed chocolate-covered balls, but just watch them carefully and you'll find that none of these self-professed foodies is above snaffling a few when they think no one's watching.

Anyway, enough of my rich and philosophical observations on the human condition, here's the recipe for a super simple no-bake classic that's guaranteed to go down a treat at teatime:

Coldharbour Mill: a little piece of knitting history ...

The other day I popped by a wool spinning mill with more history than you could shake a stick at. The Coldharbour Mill in Uffculme, Devon (just beside junction 27 on the M5) is a little chunk of the West Country's industrial heritage. It's been doing its thing, spinning wool from raw fleeces, for more than 200 years. At first it was powered by a huge water wheel, then they upgraded to steam. These days they mostly run on mains electricity, but on certain days of the year they fire up their huge beam engine and return to the age of steam once again.

Coldharbour Mill, Uffculme, Devon

How to waterproof your seed drill labels ...

The other day I was mooching around a rather fabulous garden, where they had everything organised and cared for to a level that I can only aspire to. I happened upon these seed drills where they'd recycled some used water bottles to water-proof their drill labels. It's such a simple but effective idea.

Attach your label to a stick, and then house it in an upturned plastic bottle, and the rain's not going to wash away your ink: genius!

All the best for now,

Bonny x

The Lost Gardens of Heligan in high summer ...

The last time we visited the Lost Gardens was in the springtime. They were divine. The apple trees, the bluebells and the wild garlic were blooming and the rhododendrons had just passed their best and were dropping great carpets of cerise petals on the ground.  Last week we returned to see them at the height of their summer glory. And, whilst they were very different from how they'd looked in the springtime, they delighted us with displays of ripening fruit, larder-filling vegetable drills and happy farmyard animals hanging out down by the orchards.

I've got nothing against the great Renaissance gardens or the celebrated English Landscape Movement that set out with the single objective of being pretty. All of that stuff rocks, but what really makes my heart sing is a beautiful, practical garden that's full of things I could feed my family with. And that is where these gardens come into their own. Yes, they're pretty. Yes, they please the eye. Yes, they tick all the boxes on the aesthetic check list that add up to good design. But the highest compliment that I can pay them is to say that they, quite literally, look good enough to eat.

The Lost Gardens of Heligan, Cornwall

Happiness is a butterfly,

which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp,